


don't say sorry

by hubristic



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, I really don't know how to tag, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, i feel like im missing smth, kind of ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 07:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17914811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubristic/pseuds/hubristic
Summary: sicheng wonders who the fuck would be knocking at his door at two in the morning, but he finds that no matter who he pictures, he still kinda wants to hit them over the head with a frying pan.





	don't say sorry

**Author's Note:**

> okay guys i lied, my markhyuck fic wasn't the worst thing i've ever written. this is the worst thing i've written by FAR. but please read. i need love and validation oops. but also don't because this is embarrassingly bad. but do, pls.
> 
> also im going to edit this, i PROMISE. i felt like i just needed to post something because i have so many deadlines coming up for school that i won't have another chance.
> 
> if you're confused abt what's going on look at the end notes!

sicheng wonders who the fuck would be knocking at his door at two in the morning, but he finds that no matter who he pictures, he still wants to hit them over the head with a frying pan. 

he wasn’t sleeping; he doesn’t seem to be able to lately.  _ of course he didn’t really want you.  _ he’s never been able to fall asleep quickly unless he’s exhausted beyond piecing together a coherent thought and so he’s been doing just that. working and studying until he in the most literal of terms, drops. 

he thinks about taking a frying pan with him to the door just in case it turns out to be a murderer. a murderer probably wouldn’t knock. he wouldn’t know; he isn’t a murderer. and really it depends on their m.o. (it probably wasn’t a good idea to watch criminal minds so late into the night - so early into the morning, technically. but, he has nothing better to do). anyway, he has an exam he doesn’t want to take on thursday so he decides against it.

sicheng leaves the chain lock in place, because maybe being murdered isn’t the ideal way to go, actually, and opens the door. all of the annoyance drains from his veins.

of all the billions of people on earth, he didn’t picture finding yuta behind the door. he didn't dare to.

“sicheng,” he breathes. 

“no.” sicheng closes the door before yuta has the chance to open his mouth again and turns the lock back into place.  _ no. _ he leans his forehead to the painted wood and exhales shakily. despite himself, despite the hurt he feels, he pictures yuta lifting a slender hand and pressing his palm to the other side of the door, the wood being the only thing between them because he's always been a romantic whether he's liked it or not. 

the love hazed image in his mind is what drives him to open the door again and face his reality. because his reality is never what he thinks, it's never what he wants. he lets out a short puff of air and shakes his head before sliding the chain out of place and undoing the lock.  _ you're supposed to be trying. _

yuta's standing in the same exact spot, unmoved. he blinks, coming back from being lost in thought.

“sicheng _.  _ were you awake?” yuta's eyebrows furrow worriedly. sicheng feels queasy.

_ yes.  _ “of course not. it’s two in the morning and some of us have normal sleep schedules.” he clears his throat. “what are you doing here?” sicheng asks, feeling a different type of tired.

they’ve only just started talking again. they’re at the point where they can meet with friends to fill in the awkward silences and text so that they have time to think about their responses. it’s calculated and it’s planned and sicheng is letting yuta back in. he  _ wants  _ to let yuta back in. but, they’re not at the point where you can show up drunk at ass o’clock in the morning on a friday night. sicheng is guarded; yuta becomes a little more loose lipped and a little more bold with a drink in him. sicheng can't smell alcohol on him. but why else would he be here, other than having one too many drinks pumping through his veins.

he still steps to the side to let yuta in. it’s cold, he tells himself. 

sicheng levels yuta with a glare but yuta doesn’t falter in the slightest. “yuta,” sicheng says. “what are you doing here?”

“how are you?”

“you can't answer a question with a question, yuta.”

yuta shrugs. “maybe i'm here to know how you're doing.”

sicheng raises an eyebrow. “texting exists.”

“you were sleeping.” he pauses. “how are you?”

“tired. it happens to be two in the morning.”  _ i miss you even at two in the morning. especially at two in the morning.  _ sicheng looks at yuta. he finally allows himself just to  _ look.  _ “how are  _ you _ ?”

the smile that spreads across yuta’s lips is one of the most heart wrenching things he’s seen and he reprimands himself for thinking so. “i miss you.”

sicheng pretends like he like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. but he does. he does and he kinda wants to cry because they tried. it's his fault they're like this. he made it into something bigger than it should've been, than it is. because suddenly he was incapable of pretending like he isn't head over heels in love with yuta, when the only thing that changed is that yuta knew. he wants to be the only one of them allowed to miss the other.

they tried but then yuta probably did something stupid like smile at sicheng like he always did and sicheng started crying. it was the kind of sobbing that you haven't done since you were four years old and you couldn't do anything but hiccup and sob and you can’t really breathe. your sobs are bigger than yourself and it feels like you're crying _about_ something much larger than you could ever handle when it was probably over a popsicle. over a smile. his gasps for air were broken and _he_ _felt_ broken. so he let yuta hold him to prevent all of his pieces from falling apart. that was the last time they had spoken for a while.

“i saw you yesterday.”

yuta makes a noise from the back of his throat. “it's not the same. you know it's not the same.”

sicheng wants to scream. “is that all you came to say?”

“let’s go out,” yuta says.

sicheng raises an eyebrow. “where?” he doesn’t know why he’s asking. it’s not like he’s going to say yes.  _ don’t fucking say yes.  _

yuta shrugs. “let’s get chicken.”

_ let’s get  _ fucking  _ chicken -  _ “tomorrow? or when? yuta i’m tired and we could’ve just done this over the fucking  _ phone _ -” 

“right now.” 

“ _ right now _ ? yuta, yuta aren’t you drunk? how did you even get here?  _ jesus -  _ ”

yuta takes a step forward and splutters. “i’m  _ not _ . why would you even think that? i drove here.”   
  


sicheng kind of still wishes he brought the frying pan to the door. “god. fine.  _ fine.  _ let’s go get fucking chicken at two in the fucking morning when we don’t even know if there’s a fucking restaurant open.”

yuta blinks.

a small laugh bubbles from sicheng’s chest and he lets himself give yuta a small grin. there’s no point in hiding how gone he is. yuta already knows.

yuta smiles.

  
  


“i get to choose the music. i refuse to listen to the soundtrack of one of your fucking animes,” sicheng says. he presses on the preset stations, discovering that they haven’t changed from what he set them as. part of him had assumed that yuta had changed them back to what they had been before. part of him wanted yuta to have changed them. he wanted a part of yuta to be so affected by sicheng not having such an active role in his life anymore that he couldn’t bear to listen to the same music as before. 

he reminds himself that it isn’t as big of a deal to yuta. he didn’t mean the same to yuta as yuta meant to him.

“you know,” yuta muses, “you curse a lot more when you’re tired.”

sicheng rolls his eyes and pulls his feet up onto the dashboard. 

“seatbelt,” yuta tells him without looking up from his phone. sicheng slides the belt across his torso and clicks it into place as yuta puts his phone in the car mount. “the diner is only ten minutes away but it’s going to close in like - ” he squints at the time, “- thirty minutes. and since you’re a slow eater -” he grins as sicheng huffs, “- we can eat at the park that’s down the street from it.”

“okay,” sicheng hums. 

the car ride is silent for the most part. yuta hums along to some songs and when they approach a light on red he muses on how driving laws should be different at night. sicheng snorts and says,  _ vroom vroom bitch.  _ yuta doesn’t stop laughing until they make it to the diner. 

sicheng gets out of the car feeling particularly light. 

the diner is unsurprisingly empty. there’s a group of three people in the far end, and there are two girls talking in hushed tones behind the counter, quiet for no apparent reason. but he gets it. there’s a silence in the atmosphere he doesn’t want to break. they only order chicken and two large cups of soda. they sit at a table to wait. 

sicheng immediately tears the top part of the straw wrapper and wraps his lips around the straw, ready to shoot it at yuta. yuta smiles wickedly, and his eyes widen with glee as he unwraps the top half of his own straw.

“distance or target?” yuta asks. 

“distance.” sicheng cracks a smile at the groan yuta lets out. 

“ _ distance? _ ” yuta says. “you  _ know  _ you always win when it’s distance.”

sicheng raises an eyebrow. “then you shouldn’t have let me choose, sucker.”

yuta winks, and there's a pang in sicheng's chest. “you know i’m always a sucker for you, baby.” 

sicheng’s heart clenches and he feels his heart drop. he remembers every time yuta called him baby. the first time he had ever called him baby, winwin had pushed him off his couch and yuta had smiled so wide and the edges of his eyes crinkled. the last time yuta had called him baby, winwin told him he loved him the next day and yuta told him nothing but  _ i’m so sorry. _

“please don’t say that.” yuta looks at him and he feels stupidly small. 

“i don’t -”

“yuta please.”

“oh.” sicheng ducks his head. “i’m sorry,” yuta says.

“it’s not your fault.”

and it isn’t. it's not his fault sicheng fell in love with him, and it's not his fault for not loving sicheng back. maybe he flirted, maybe he made sicheng feel  _ special _ , and maybe sicheng was hurt because  _ how could he do that,  _ but sicheng could never be mad at him for not loving him. love doesn't work like that. sicheng let himself get caught up in the feeling of being wanted when he wasn't.

  
  


if there was one person who he could talk to about anything and everything, it was taeil. 

so taeil sat across from him in their booth at that stupid, hipster, hole-in-the-wall cafe, listening. because taeil listens. he doesn't judge and he doesn't sugarcoat his words and he doesn't tell you what you want to hear. taeil tells you how it is, and tells you what you need to hear.

if he was surprised to hear that sicheng loved yuta, he didn't show it. his eyebrows quirked up towards the edges of the hair falling onto his forehead when sicheng told taeil about how yuta had rejected him lightly. taeil didn't look at him with pity, but with sympathy.

“and i thought he liked - loved - me too. i guess. because you know -” sicheng felt his ears turn hot and suddenly it was that much harder to make eye contact with taeil. “he was always - always… flirting.” 

but it wasn't just flirting. if it was  _ just  _ flirting it wouldn't have hurt as much. there were lingering gazes and hugs, lasting several beats too long. there were late nights spent cuddled under covers, and conversations over the phone until they both fell asleep. yuta rubbed his back and sat on the bathroom with him when his lizard died and sicheng curled into a ball in his arms. yuta surprised him with take out after a long day at work. yuta broke through his walls, took them apart brick by brick. 

yuta became his best friend. he misses his best friend.

taeil hadn't said anything so he rushed to justify himself. “and it's not like i don't know he would. flirt with other people. i know that. but we - i felt - he made me feel…” sicheng licks his lips. 

“special.”

“special.”

taeil sighs. “if i'm being honest, i always thought there was something going on between the two of you. but if he says -” he stops his sentence short, his words hanging in the air.  _ if he says he doesn't love you then that's just the way it is.  _ “you're going to have to get over him now. when you didn't know it was different. you can't hold on.”

“i know.” quite frankly, he didn't really want to.

  
  


they sit in silence waiting for their order. the silence carries to the car, it's not heavy, it's not thickly overbearing. sicheng is suffocating. it's the opposite of drowning, to the same effect. he's flying too high and the air is spread too thin. sicheng is suffocating. 

sicheng hates being sensitive. he hates how easily he cries and he hates how easily he hurts. he hates that he can’t say no when he should, he hates that he doesn’t want to. sicheng hates a lot of things, lately. most of all he hates how yuta made him love him and couldn’t love him in return.  _ isn't that on you? _

they pull up in the small park, the playground for kids kept to the bare minimum of a slide and two swings and the grass area limited to the size of a single soccer field. 

yuta grabs for the plastic take out bag in the backseat pulls a blanket into his lap that he hadn’t noticed earlier. he holds the bag up. “stargazing and chicken?’

  
  


“little dipper.”

“big dipper.”

“medium dipper.” 

yuta lets out a bark of laughter and sicheng's responding, prideful grin is a little too bright.

yuta's smile softens. “i’ve missed you.”

  
  


it's sudden. it's sudden and yuta is smiling and laughing and sicheng. sicheng:

sicheng can’t do this. he can’t have yuta dragging him out to get food at two in the morning like this. he can’t stand yuta smiling at him and flirting with him just like before. he can’t bear having yuta tell him that he misses him. sicheng misses him.

he's running.

“sicheng wait -” he grabs sicheng's wrist firmly, but so, so softly. like he's fragile. breaking. broken.

“let  _ go. _ i knew this was a bad idea. god, we - i - you don't  _ understand _ -”

yuta practically growls, running a hand through his hair. he steps in front of sicheng. “you don’t get to say that. you don’t get to pretend like you’re the only one of us who this is hard for.”

sicheng scoffs. is yuta kidding? yuta has no idea what it feels like. “we’re not in the same situation here, yuta.” he shoves a long finger at the center of yuta’s chest. “tell me how coming to my fucking house at two in the morning telling me that you miss me and then flirting with me and telling me to go and fucking looking at the stars and shit with you is supposed to help me get over you. i  _ need  _ to get over you yuta. and i can’t do that if you - you treat me the same as before because i thought you -” his voice breaks and sicheng feels so, so weak, “- i thought you loved me.” sicheng finds himself sitting on the ground his legs curled up to his chest. he rests his forehead against his knees. “god i was so stupid - i’m so stupid.” he doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears follow the curve of his upper lip, and into his mouth. sicheng doesn't know when he stopped speaking korean. yuta can't understand him; he's still listening.

for so long he hasn’t been able to even  _ think  _ about what happened with yuta but now that he’s started he can’t stop. he lets yuta grab his hand. “and i don’t  _ blame  _ you. and i don't want you to feel bad. i never want to - to  _ guilt  _ you. you just - i just - i need time. i need time yuta, i need time.” 

“i'm so sorry.”

sicheng's head snaps up. with red eyes, and snot running out of his nose and tear track stained cheeks, he looks yuta in the eyes. “don't say you're sorry. please - please don't. it's not your fault-”  _ that you don't love me. just let me have that too. i don't want to love you.  _

“sicheng, i love you.”

and the world stops. 

he breathes.

restarts. 

“... excuse me? yuta you can't just -” 

“sicheng. i am in love with you.” he's not lying. 

sicheng knows when yuta is lying. a lying yuta can't make eye contact and the tips of his ears turn red. a lying yuta can't get a sentence out before crumbling. but this yuta. this yuta is holding his hands out in front of him and  _ vulnerable  _ tattooed to his forehead _.  _ this yuta has wide watery eyes and the only red is painted onto the high slopes of his cheekbones due to the biting winds. and, for the most part yuta  _ doesn't  _ lie. yuta jokes and yuta pranks. but he doesn't lie. not if he can help it. he wouldn't lie, not right now, not to him. 

and sicheng realizes he's been given something. something that so few people have, he can count them on one hand. the power to hurt nakamoto yuta. very badly. but he's  _ been _ hurt, very badly.

“you -. oh.” 

yuta's hands tremble in the air between them and sicheng sits on his own. “it wasn't serious, at first. i - i felt like i didn't deserve you. because of that. because it felt like i was lying to you, somehow - i don't know. maybe i was, at the beginning. but then it was different. it - it became different. and i didn't know how to go from there. i didn't want to ruin our friendship because even if you did love me back i wouldn't know what to do with that, how to be what you needed, i thought you deserved so much more - i  _ think-.”  _ he breathes. “i was. scared. i was scared. of so much, i'm still terrified but you're  _ hurting  _ and i've been hurting you and i should've just told you and i'm sorry. sicheng, i'm so sorry.”

and it's hard. it's hard to comprehend. and he has questions. but yuta takes his hand, and kisses his knuckles and fingertips despite the dirt on his palms. “i'm sorry.”

and sicheng thinks, maybe, they'll be alright. 

_ we'll be alright.  _

**Author's Note:**

> basically,,,, yuta and sicheng became friends and yuta would always flirt with him. sicheng fell in love with him and yeah... actually,, okay it's not that confusing. i just don't know if you can pick that up skdjjd
> 
> and as always, kudos and comments are very much appreciated!
> 
> follow me on tumblr!  
> [skz](https://yangsjeongin.tumblr.com)  
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> [nct](https://dvngsicheng.tumblr.com)


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